Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egotist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge or act. These are functions of the self.
No, you do not have to live as a man; it is an act of moral choice. But you cannot live as anything else – and the alternative is that state of living death which you now see within you and around you, the state of a thing unfit for existence, no longer human and less than animal, a thing that knows nothing but pain and drags itself through its span of years in the agony of unthinking self-destruction.
Most people build as they live – as a matter of routine and senseless accident. But a few understand that building is a great symbol. We live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form. For the man who understands this, a house he owns is a statement of his life. If he doesn’t build, when he has the means, it’s because his life has not been what he wanted.
I don’t think a man can hurt another, not in any important way. Neither hurt him nor help him. I have really nothing to forgive you.
Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two – existence and consciousness – are axioms you cannot escape, these two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your knowledge and in its sum, from the first ray of light you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you might acquire at its end.
It was a race he was running now, a race between his rent money and... he did not know the name of the other contestant. Perhaps it was every man whom he passed on the street.
Your life, your achievement, your happiness, your person are of paramount importance. Live up to your highest vision of yourself no matter what the circumstances you might encounter. An exalted view of self-esteem is a man’s most admirable quality.
I want it to be a palace – only I don’t think palaces are very luxurious. They’re so big, so promiscuously public. A small house is the true luxury. A residence for two people only – for my wife and me. It won’t be necessary to allow for a family, we don’t intend to have children. Nor for visitors, we don’t intend to entertain.
Man cannot survive except by gaining knowledge, and reason is his only means to gain it. Reason is the faculty that perceives, identifies and integrates the material provided by his senses. The task of his senses is to give him the evidence of existence, but the task of identifying it belongs to his reason, his senses tell him only that something is, but what it is must be learned by his mind.
She had forgotten every problem, person and event behind her; they had always been clouded in her sight, to be hurried past, to be brushed aside, never final, never quite real. This was reality, she thought, this sense of clear outlines, of purpose, of lightness, of hope. This was the way she had expected to live – she had wanted to spend no hour and take no action that would mean less than this.
Don’t you know that most people take most things because that’s what’s given them, and they have no opinion whatever? Do you wish to be guided by what they expect you to think they think or by your own judgment?
I want you to observe... that those who cry the loudest about their disillusionment, about the failure of virtue, the futility of reason, the impotence of logic – are those who have achieved the full, exact, logical result of the ideas they preached, so mercilessly logical that they dare not identify it.
Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that’s through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality – you who have never known any – but to discover it.
She said it quite correctly; there was nothing offensive in the quiet politeness of her voice; but following his high note of enthusiasm, her voice struck a tone that seemed flat and deadly in its indifference – as if the two sounds mingled into an audible counterpoint around the melodic thread of her contempt.
What greater wealth is there than to own your own life and to spend it on growing?
Two things were impossible to him: to stand still or to move aimlessly.
He looked at Roark and saw the calmest, kindest face – a face without a hint of pity. It did not look like the countenance of men who watch the agony of another with a secret pleasure, uplifted by the sight of a beggar who needs their compassion; it did not bear the cast of the hungry soul that feeds upon another’s humiliation.
He defeated her by admitting her power; she could not have the gratification of enforcing it.
Her face looked as if she knew his worst suffering and it was hers and she wished to bear it like this, coldly, asking no words of mitigation.
No. Forget it. You’re only fooling yourself.” “About what?” “About anything being worth a damn. It’s dust, lady, all of it, dust and blood.